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Course 5 · Lesson 1.3

Biblical Hebrew in brief: history, script and sound

11 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 5 outline

Module 1: What the Languages Are and What This Course Can Do

  1. The languages of the Bible: Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek
  2. What an introduction can and cannot do: no fluency, and why
  3. Biblical Hebrew in brief: history, script and sound
  4. Koine Greek in brief: history, script and sound

Module 2: Hebrew Fundamentals

  1. The Hebrew alphabet, reading right to left, and the vowel points
  2. Roots, nouns, gender, number and the construct chain
  3. Hebrew verbs: perfect, imperfect and the seven stems in outline
  4. A core Hebrew vocabulary and how to learn it

Module 3: Greek Fundamentals

  1. The Greek alphabet, accents and breathing marks
  2. Nouns, cases and the definite article
  3. Greek verbs: tense, aspect, voice and mood in outline
  4. A core Greek vocabulary and how to learn it

Module 4: The Texts: Masoretic, Septuagint and New Testament Manuscripts

  1. The Masoretic Text and the codices that preserve it
  2. The Septuagint and where translators consult it
  3. Greek New Testament manuscripts and printed editions
  4. How variants are recorded in footnotes and critical editions

Module 5: How Translations Are Made

  1. Formal and dynamic equivalence, and the middle positions
  2. Who translates: committees, churches and traditions of translation
  3. Hard cases: idioms, word play, gender and untranslatable words
  4. Reading a translation’s preface to learn its principles

Module 6: Tools for the Reader

  1. Interlinear Bibles: what they show and what they hide
  2. Lexicons and concordances: how to read an entry
  3. How to do a word study, step by step
  4. Common word study errors and how to avoid them

Module 7: Evaluating Translation Differences

  1. Locating the Hebrew or Greek words behind a verse
  2. Types of translation differences: text, grammar, word meaning and style
  3. A worked example from the Old Testament
  4. A worked example from the New Testament
  5. Knowing your limits, and when to ask a specialist

All courses

Program / Course 5: Biblical Languages / Lesson 1.3

What you will learn

  • Place Biblical Hebrew in history and tell it apart from later and modern Hebrew.
  • Describe how the script developed and why the printed Bible shows consonants, vowel points and accents.
  • Explain why the vowels of the Hebrew Bible were added late and what that means for readers.
  • Describe the divine name and how Jewish and Christian traditions have handled it.

The big idea

Biblical Hebrew is the ancient form of Hebrew in which most of the Old Testament is written. It belongs to the Semitic family, is read from right to left, and was first written with consonants only. Jewish scribes called Masoretes later added vowel marks and accents to preserve how the text was read aloud. The printed Hebrew Bible therefore combines an older consonantal text with a later reading tradition. This lesson gives a short overview and does not teach reading Hebrew with fluency.

Key terms

Biblical Hebrew
The form of Hebrew found in the Old Testament, used roughly from the early first millennium before Christ to the period after the exile.
Consonantal text
The text written in consonant letters alone, which is the form in which Hebrew Scripture was copied for centuries.
Masoretes
Jewish scribes of the early Middle Ages who recorded the vowels, accents and notes of the traditional reading of the Hebrew Bible. The name comes from a Hebrew word for tradition.
Matres lectionis
Latin for mothers of reading. Certain consonant letters that also serve to indicate vowels.
Tetragrammaton
The four letters of the divine name, written YHWH in English letters.
Transliteration
Representing the sounds or letters of one script in the letters of another. Transliteration is a convenience, not a translation.
Dead Sea Scrolls
Ancient Jewish manuscripts found near the Dead Sea from 1947 onward, including Hebrew copies of biblical books more than a thousand years older than the oldest complete medieval manuscripts.

Background

Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Canaanite branch. Other languages of that branch include Phoenician. Aramaic, Arabic and Akkadian belong to other branches of the wider family. This relationship is one reason why scholars compare cognate words in these languages when the meaning of a Hebrew word is uncertain.

Hebrew was spoken in ancient Israel and Judah. After the exile in Babylon, Aramaic became more common, and by the time of Jesus Hebrew was used mainly for worship, Scripture and learned study, although it also continued in some speech. It was kept alive in Jewish liturgy and study, and was revived as an everyday spoken language in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Modern Hebrew is the national language of Israel. It is related to Biblical Hebrew but is not the same, and a speaker of modern Hebrew can read much of the Bible but meets unfamiliar words and forms.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Stages of the language

Scholars speak of several stages. Biblical Hebrew covers the Old Testament and includes both earlier and later forms. The Dead Sea Scrolls contain Hebrew that is close to biblical but shows changes. Mishnaic Hebrew is the language of the early rabbinic writings. Medieval Hebrew was the language of poetry, philosophy and scholarship, and Modern Hebrew is the revived language of today.

A student of the Bible works mainly with the first stage, but should know that the others exist. A word in a modern Hebrew dictionary may have taken on a sense that it did not have in biblical times.

Step 2: The script

The earliest Hebrew inscriptions use an alphabet related to the Phoenician script, often called the paleo Hebrew script. After the exile, Jews adopted a script derived from the Aramaic alphabet, often called the square script, which is the script of printed Hebrew Bibles today. A few later manuscripts and inscriptions, including some Dead Sea Scrolls, use the older script, especially for the divine name.

Hebrew is read from right to left. The alphabet has twenty two letters, all of them consonants. There are no capital letters. Five letters take a different shape at the end of a word. The next lesson in this course teaches the letters.

Step 3: Why the vowels were added

Hebrew was written for a very long time without marks for vowels. A reader who knew the language could supply the vowels from the context, much as a reader of English can read a sign that says BLDG. Some letters, such as the letters aleph, he, waw and yod, came to be used as vowel indicators. These are the matres lectionis, and their use grew over time.

As Hebrew became less commonly spoken, the risk grew that the traditional reading of the text would be lost. In the early Middle Ages, groups of scribes in several places, with the Tiberias community the best known, worked out systems of vowel marks, accent signs and notes. These marks sit around the consonants and do not change the consonantal text. The system of Tiberias is the one printed in nearly all Bibles today.

Step 4: What this means for a reader

The vowel points are a faithful record of a tradition, and a very old one, but they are not part of the oldest written text. In rare cases where translators suspect that a different vowel reading is better, they may propose one. This is a specialist judgment and is always marked in good commentaries.

Pronunciation also varies. Modern Israeli Hebrew, Sephardic traditions and Ashkenazi traditions of reading all differ in some sounds. Scholars reconstruct the ancient pronunciation from evidence such as transcriptions of Hebrew names in Greek. A student should choose one practical system for reading aloud and not claim that it is the sound of the prophets.

Step 5: The divine name

The name of God in the Old Testament is written with four consonants, YHWH. In Jewish practice the name is not pronounced, and the reader says Adonai, meaning Lord, or Hashem, meaning the Name. The vowel marks printed with the four letters in many manuscripts are those of Adonai, as a reminder. A mixture of the two led to the form Jehovah in some Christian usage.

English Bibles commonly print LORD in capital letters for YHWH. Some Catholic, Protestant and scholarly translations print Yahweh, a reconstruction of the probable pronunciation. The Orthodox Church uses Lord in its liturgy, following the Septuagint. These choices are part of translation philosophy, which a later module takes up.

  1. Which stage of Hebrew does my passage belong to, and does it have Aramaic or later forms?
  2. Am I reading a transliteration, a consonantal text or a pointed text?
  3. Does my English Bible note any difference over vowels or a different Hebrew reading?
  4. How is the divine name printed in my Bible, and what principle is behind that choice?
  5. Which reading system am I using to pronounce Hebrew aloud, and why?
  6. What do I depend on the Masoretes for?

Examples

A word without vowels

Imagine the English letters BK. Depending on the context, a reader could supply the vowels to make book, back, beak or bike. Hebrew readers faced a similar task, but with a living language and a stable reading tradition, they did not often go wrong. The Masoretes preserved that tradition.

The divine name in two translations

Open one translation that prints LORD and one that prints Yahweh in the same verse. The Hebrew behind both is the same four consonants. The difference comes from the translators’ principles, not from a difference in the text.

Hebrew in two scripts

Some Dead Sea Scrolls are written mainly in the square script but write the divine name in the older paleo Hebrew letters. This shows that scribes marked the name as special, even when copying in a different alphabet.

Different perspectives

Jewish

Jewish tradition holds the Hebrew text and its traditional reading as the heart of Scripture. The Masoretes are honored as guardians of that reading, and the text is read aloud in the synagogue from handwritten scrolls without vowel marks, with the reader depending on knowledge of the tradition.

Catholic

The Church accepts that Hebrew is the original language of the Old Testament books of the Hebrew Bible and encourages the study of it. The ancient Greek and Latin versions are also part of the Church’s heritage.

Orthodox

Orthodox tradition reads the Old Testament in the Greek of the Septuagint, which sometimes differs from the Masoretic Hebrew. Orthodox scholars generally value the Hebrew as an important witness, and the Septuagint remains the Church’s text.

Protestant

Protestant translators since the Reformation have normally translated the Old Testament from the Hebrew text of the Masoretic tradition. Many Protestants have trusted the vowel points as a reliable record, while others have asked whether they reflect an earlier or later tradition.

Scholarly

Scholars agree that the vowel points record a real and old reading tradition, but they debate how closely it matches the pronunciation of the biblical period. The pronunciation of the divine name as Yahweh is widely accepted as probable but is a reconstruction.

Why it matters

A reader who sees the printed Hebrew Bible should know what it contains: a very old consonantal text, and a medieval reading tradition carefully attached to it. That knowledge explains why scholars sometimes disagree over a vowel, why English Bibles print the divine name differently, and why a transliteration is no substitute for the text.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: The vowel points were written by Moses or the prophets.

Correction: The vowel marks were added by Jewish scribes in the early Middle Ages. They record an older reading tradition, but they are not part of the oldest written text.

Misunderstanding: Modern Hebrew is the same as Biblical Hebrew.

Correction: They are related, and a modern speaker can read much of the Bible. But vocabulary, grammar and usage have changed, and the modern language includes many new words.

Misunderstanding: Jehovah is the true pronunciation of the divine name.

Correction: Jehovah arose from combining the consonants YHWH with the vowels of Adonai. Most scholars think the original sound was closer to Yahweh, though no one can be sure.

Misunderstanding: Because the text had no vowels, it could mean anything.

Correction: Readers had a living language and a strong reading tradition. In most places the vowels are not in doubt, and the few doubtful cases are noted in scholarly editions.

Knowledge check

Who were the Masoretes, and what did they add to the Hebrew Bible?

The Masoretes were Jewish scribes of the early Middle Ages, notably at Tiberias. They added vowel marks, accent signs and marginal notes that preserved the traditional reading and copying of the Hebrew text. They did not change the consonants, which they treated as fixed.

Why was Hebrew written without vowels for so long?

The language was written in consonants, as with other Semitic scripts, and readers who knew Hebrew could supply the vowels from context. Some letters later came to mark vowels as well. As Hebrew was less often spoken, scribes added full vowel marks to preserve the reading.

How do translations handle YHWH?

Many English Bibles print LORD in capital letters, following Jewish practice of saying Adonai and the Greek Septuagint’s use of Lord. Some translations print Yahweh, a probable ancient pronunciation, and a few print Jehovah. The Hebrew behind all of them is the same four consonants.

What are two stages of Hebrew other than Biblical Hebrew?

Mishnaic Hebrew is the language of early rabbinic writings, from around the first centuries after Christ. Modern Hebrew is the revived spoken language of Israel today, shaped in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Medieval Hebrew, used in poetry and scholarship, is a third answer.

Think it through

  1. What does it mean for a text to come with a reading tradition attached to it?
  2. How should a reader treat a vowel mark that a scholar suggests is not original?
  3. Why might a community choose not to say a name aloud?
  4. Why is it wise to separate what the Masoretic Text records from what the earlier consonants may have meant?

Independent assignment

Three printings of one name

In your own notebook, write 300 to 400 words. Choose three English Bibles from different traditions, and look up how each prints the divine name in Exodus 3:15 or Psalm 23:1. Read each translation’s preface or notes to see what it says about the choice. Write what you found, then explain in your own words the difference between a decision about the Hebrew text and a decision about how to translate. Do not send this to anyone.

Further study